I’ve just spent a day and a half to update and fix my other “commerical” blog. Thanks God, it’s only a day and a half as it could have been easily more. I haven’t updated that blog for ages. WordPress version has gone from 2.0 to 2.8. Many links were broken. The pages looked utterly hideous in different browers because the old theme didn’t work with the new wordpress version. Many affiliate links stopped working. My Amazon travel store doesn’t display goodies. Juck! Now the blog looks semi-decent and functional, I wonder if there is an easier and more efficient way of maintaing my blog. Perhaps, I can come up with a check-list/procedure, similar to my other one for manage photos. It can be something like this:
- WP version: Check for newer WP version every 6 months or prompted by a message on the server to update, whichever happens last
. On the other hand, if it’s working why fix. I don’t know the downside of this, but one thing I know for sure, the theme I’m using might not be compatible. Theme => the look of the site is the first thing everybody recognizes so unless I fix the theme right away, I have to use an alternative one => losing all the customized work I’ve done. - Upgrading method: Should I do it manuall or via my server? I don’t even know what’s the difference between these two: requirements and downside.
- Backup blog: How often? Where to save the backup file? How to use this backup file anyway when the blog completely crashes? I backup my blog every once in a while and have these files either saved on the server or in the emails, but I have no idea on how to use them.
- Export posts: How often? Where to save the file? This is essential if you don’t want to lose all of your work.
- Theme changes: I would like change the look every few months, but first I need to understand the very basic of a WP theme template how certain things affect it. Also I need to nail down the part of theme package that will have to change to accommodate my own customization.
- Web design (HTML, CSS, PHP): Good oh lord I have forgotten every thing. Some tags were deprecated since the last decade and I just learned it yesterday. I knew a tidbid of PHP to cut/copy/paste/moving other people’s code around without fatally ruin it, still having a deeper understand of it would have made my life simpler. Moreover, if I care a little bit more for CSS, I could have gotten the page look I want.
- Publishing content: At least this is the only department I’m most decent. I do update more regularly now in a very organized and efficient way. Thanks to Firefox’s Scribefire addon. I keep posts online so I can access them from everywhere. Once finished, I use Scribefire and schedule publish to my blog.
- What else?
I have been on a long-term technology/gadget fasting and try to minimize getting involved too much in the technical side of everything, so to do these kinds of things is problematic for me.
I admit that I’m not very good in the keeping-in-touch department. I rarely email or phone the my family and friends. Sure, I remember them all the time, but still I don’t see the point of contacting them. Weird! And then I get into this mood “Hmm Did I do something wrong? Why did they stop contacting me all of the sudden?” The Vietnamese have a bad tendency to assume that we did something wrong which results in the silent treatment; however we don’t clarify with that person to confirm the assumption. Also we rarely make the first move, which I think has something do with either shyness or inflated ego which I find myself commit alot. Recently, I have been thinking more about the term “friend”, people who were and are my friends, “friends” I keep adding on Couchsurfing and Facebook and the new people I meet through bar/pub/friend-of-friend. It’s definitely not right when I do the last two more often than the first. The year is going to end soon, and if I don’t do it now, I probably won’t. So I compiled a list of people who are my friends and will just cold-call them. (Yeah like salespeople get your name from the phone book and start ringing.)
People who live in the same city will have to see me for lunch, coffee, tea, beer or whatever.
This entry has no introduction yet as it was mysteriously deleted from my phone while I was almost finishing it on the train from Feldkirch back to Zurich.
Train ride
Mountain on one side and lake Zurich on the other together with small wooden houses sharing with lazy cows. Green and grass are visually boring, but since this is Switzerland where everything looks perfectly clean and tidy–including mud–offering a nicer alternative to the noisy Zurich. After the train made it way past Sargaan and headed closer to Austria, the scenery became less and less interesting thus I resolved to close my eyes dreaming. Other than that, I would have to look at the old Indian lady slouching on the seat in front of me.
Feldkirch
It was pretty cool to find out about Feldkirch given I had done only three hour last minute planning before going to the bus station snatching the last bus ticket departing two hours later. The city has a cozy feel of a mountainous city and a small, pretty old town typical of Europe. Sure it is nothing spectacular but it’s way more classier than industrial and expensive Schaan. On Saturday, there is a flea market at the end of the main square. Maybe Austrians have a thing for flea market as there is one 10 times larger in Vienna. It’s good to search for travel tips and tricks online beside gnawing at guide books. Guide books are useful but they can never be up-to-date and provide the precise information that we want.
Though it wasn’t Sunday, shops were either closed or closed early. After briefly touring the town, I decided to return to my hostel which I thought rather comfy and cool. The Youth Hostel “Hostel Feldkirch”, has been operated by the city for 10 years and located about 15 minute walk from the train/bus station as well as the down town. The building is of typical German Renaissance style seen a lot in Strasbourg, France. In the past, it was a leper society where sick people was kept in and isolated from the outside world.
Being called a youth hostel, there were hardly any youth there except for a handful of off-season travelers. A few are foreigners who reside there long-term. They either work in Feldkirch or in Liechtenstein. There is this German guy from Stuggart who sits in the lounge every evening watching TV and volunteered every bit of information to me. He found a job in Liechtenstein working as some kind of engineer after getting tired of paying heavy taxes in Germany. He has been living in the hostel for six months while looking for a flat to move in with his new girl friend. His current situation is financially paradise: living in cheap border city, getting salary in Liechtenstein standard (which is high), paying less than 1.5% tax and paying less than 500 EUR for rent. Like Andorra, Liechtenstein is a tax haven with only 1.2 percent personal income tax. It’s dirt cheap compared to the hefty tax rate common in Europe, reach at high at 50% in Sweden. For a German, he’s quite talkative though later I learn that his parents were from Italy and just recently returned to the country. After two hours watching TV with him, I knew almost everything about him and his opinion about a lot of things like how he watches “Dirty Dancing” for 20 times and cries every single one of it, how he knows too much information about celebrities, how he dumped his Paris Hilton wannabe girl-friend, how he hates the Turks-therefore-Muslims. “I can’t help it. I like what I like and hate what I hate. I don’t travel to Turkey because I just hate them.” He seems to have low opinion of almost everybody from his Polish dorm-mate, an alcoholic-recovered who now works with a group of recovering alcoholic, the Japanese traveler who only ate instant noodles every evening and spoke little English, the Chinese people at his work who for some strange reason keep laughing in group, to two young Asian tourists who had the ball to wake him up from his sleep by the loud noise from their luggage dragged across the wooden floor. “I asked them to be quiet but they didn’t understand and roared into laughter.” I can understand. Young, cute Asian girls from Asia have a habit of giggling when they don’t understand or understand little what being said. His friend once introduced him to good-looking Slovak women and as it turned out “They are pretty but their teeth are freaking black,” he said. Okay then what? “Geez. It’s disgusting! These Americans with the bellies sag to here (making a round belly gesture with his hands). They come out of the supermarket carrying bags big as these (again using similar hand gestures).” He follows me all the way from the lounge down to the kitchen to continue our conversation or rather his stream of consciousness or monologue or whatever you call it. People probably don’t give a shit about his opinion, so once he finds someone who does, he won’t let go that easily. One thing you ladies might find attractive about him is his disregard with typical Italian men’s behaviors. “I have a German head. I can’t live in Italy anymore.” He told me. “My Italian friends asked me who irons my shirts, does my laundry and cooks my meals. I said ‘me’ and they were like ‘Are you gay?’” He rolls his lower lip. (The guy has very expressive face.) “These men stay with their parents until they get married. I have a friend who wed his 10-year girlfriend. They never went on a trip for more han a month alone. He did not kiss her when dropping her off at her house because ‘Are you crazy? Her father will to kill me.’ They divorced 6 months later.”
Liechtenstein is doubly landlocked by Austria and Switzerland, small and rich so it’s probably understandable why Liechtensteiners are not wide-arm open to foreigners even to those Caucasian, German-speaking Germans or Austrians. “My German friend has been living in Liechtenstein for 6 years, but every other weekend he drives back to Germany. He has no friend there. He can’t make friends with the Liechtensteiners.” The opinionated, racist, contemptuous feminist German lets me on in a cultural secret which I am not, at this point, surprised. We can carry on with our world-peace message, promote equality among people, instill the ideal “we are the citizen of the world” or that sort of thing. But we should be level-headed to realize that there are a few things which probably won’t change. Unless we adopt the nomadic lifestyle and immigrate every so often, we have to accept the inevitable discrimination and alienation of the host culture toward its immigrant/expat communities. After all, what goes around comes around. The Ukrainians subjected to discrimination from the richer Russia. The Russia suffers the same fate in richer Czech. The Czechs experience the same fate in richer Germany. One would think the bug stops here, but then the Germans get the cold shoulder from the Liechtensteiners. Try this experiment and randomly pick a country X in the middle of the immigration/emigration chain and you’ll come up with the same X being both the subject and object source of the disdain. Why pick a country in the middle? Because then you can guarantee people immigrate to and from that country. Countries in the bottom means they are dirt poor and don’t attract anybody. Countries at the top have too many immigrants, but their citizens have no need to emigrate. Let’s construct a simple chain.
The chain might be a bit silly since there are more levels lower than the bottom. USA might not be on the top of the chain given their economic situation, but I don’t know if Americans ever immigrate in mass waves from their countries. Germany is at the 2nd level just because the Germans do migrate elsewhere beside having a huge immigration population of their own. Sweden is probably a surprising example to you, but my logic is that it has a large immigrant community and Swedes do migrate to Norway to do menial work Norwegians don’t want, though not the kind of “menial” other poorer immigrant groups have to do.
Riding to Noeffel from the border to return the bike, I saw more of Feldkirch, the beautiful, winding canal and mountainous, countryside landscape of this border city.
9/2009
I took a month (ok a bit more) break from learning Czech and Spanish to re-examine my progress which I am not too much happy about. Just by simply going to classes for two/three hours a week doesn’t really help me. What it does is probably makes me feel good that “Okay I’m taking lessons.” But do I learn really? Classroom and teacher are only some aspects of learning a foreign language. I’m a holistic learner/doer, thus I tend to accomplish things more easily only once I see the situation from all angles and link them all together to create a customized process of my own. I found an article which I think is very good at summing up many factors in learning a foreign language.
Naturalistic’ method
=> You should learn a foreign language as if you are a native speaker learning the first language, similar to the learning process of a child.
- All classroom activity should be conducted in the target language.
- An emphasis on everyday words and sentences.
- Carefully graded question-answer exchanges between teachers (native speakers) and students in small classes.
- Correct pronunciation important.
- Use of objects, pictures and demonstration to teach vocabulary.
- Grammar, if it was taught, to be taught inductively.
Army method
=> Behaviourist psychology (conditioning – habit formation – ‘tabula rasa’ – punishments/rewards). Language is just a learned habit.
- Great use of tapes and language laboratories
- A lot of drilling
- Repetition and memorizing of phrases
- An emphasis on structural patterns rather than on meaning
- Little or no grammatical explanation
- Positive reinforcement of correct responses
- Great importance on correct pronunciation
- Errors must not be tolerated
Seven Characteristics of Successful Language Learners
- They have insight into their own learning styles and preferences.
- They take an active approach to the learning task.
- They are willing to take risks.
- They are good guessers.
- They watch not only what words and sentences mean, but also how they are put together.
- They make the new language into a separate system, and try to think in it as soon as possible.
- They are tolerant and outgoing in their approach to the new language.
The Teacher’s Role
- to motivate; to support the growth of pupils’ self confidence
- to stress some ‘obvious’ points about language learning
- to create situations that will make each pupil as active as possible
- to give pupils plenty to do
- to encourage discussions of ‘how to learn’ and to set activities that will assist ‘learning awareness’
- to convey a genuine interest in learning X
- to ensure that X is the classroom language
I will try the Army boot-camp method and find a teacher who fits the aforementioned criteria or persuade him/her into one.
[Source]
I was on the bike rush, so the first thing I did when getting off the train in Zurich was to check in my backpack and inquired for free bike. Yup I’m not kidding, you can rent bikes for free in one of the most expensive city in Europe, and this is probably one of few places you can get anything for free. I still wonder the reason for this: encourage people to bike, attract more tourists, experiment different ways of advertising or the city has spare money to spend? Getting a bike is easy alright, but then you’ll face a huge problem, navigating in the midst of Zurich traffic. The city is a typical European capital with narrow streets packed with people, buses, cars, and trams. It’s crazy! It’s illegal to ride on the pedestrian pavement, so you have to ride on tiny yellow bike lanes which in many places don’t exist because the streets are just too small. Therefore, you end up sharing the street with all these big monsters. But why am I complaining? Isn’t that I grew up in Saigon, where traffic was a hundred times worse. Streets in Prague are the same if not bigger, and traffic is not as bad but biking in downtown of Prague is not encouraged. So why this practice is even possible in Zurich? Thanks to the notorious law-biding tradition of Switzerland, drivers here obey traffic laws, making them very good drivers. With that comfort in mind, I ignored blasting engine noise around my ears and trams behind waiting for me to move away from the track, I cycled around the street of Zurich as if this wasn’t my first time. One of my hand was on the handle bar while the other occasionally pressed on the camera button. I completely entrusted my life to the hands of the Swiss. Long live order!
I walked the bike along the Limat river and explored the old quarter. But I got a bit annoyed to stop the bike every few minutes to take photos of interesting spots or to avoid the tram, so I resorted to just head straight along the main street until I stopped seeing anything nice. I hit a construction block and had to make right turn to a side street. It was there that I saw a head of me what seemed to be water and pedestrians biking and strolling. There it was Lake Zurich. I was glad to have found the lake after having spotting it first hand on the train to Feldkirch. I had given up on finding the lake thinking that it’s somewhere in the suburb of Zurich and that I didn’t have much time. But here it is, I just walked right into it. I rode the length of the park until I reached the end and backtracked to find a good lunch spot. There was a Chinese garden right in the middle of the park and conveniently a Chinese restaurant next to it. I bought of a box of chow-mein and sat by a tree, next to a group of swans, ducks and birds, watching still boats and slurped down oriental noodles. 
I thought I would just sit here until returning to the train station to catch my bus at 7:30. But after half an hour in this calm, dreamy environment surrounded by peaceful boats, ducks, dogs and people who being Swiss are rather dull, that is they lack the dramatic flare of the Italians. I got bored and decided to go back to the old quarter along the river where I was a few hours ago. On the way back, I saw old buildings on my right and turned to that direction, and once again not following the map served me well, I had found the other part of of Zurich’s old town. After traveling for while, you get rid of this instant urge to see every single sight and destination laid out for you in tourist guide. Sure you should see them all if possible, but every now and then, you leave the guiding up to your senses,follow the aroma from a house hidden some where, to chants of a street protest, to stray melodies from an apartment on the third floor or to a glimpse of something peculiar. Whenever I was ready go back to the train station, dropped off the bike and got ready for the bus, I ran into some nice sights which pushed my wheels further away into small alleys full of sights and things traditionally and typically Europe. I found the church with the largest clock face in Europe by accident doing what I did best: peeking my head here and there in every alley to see if it hid anything interesting. I read about the church in the mini guide but reassured myself that I would not be able nor interested in finding it because it involved maps. Well I found it anyway. Not only finding the church, I walked in an unbelievably calmest quarter where I saw a few ladies sitting on a bench reading book against the enormous clock face amidst a piano sonata played from an opposite building. Not to far from it was a lady taking a sip of water at a fountain before moving on. I could not help but noticing how European the atmosphere was.
Just like that, I had seen many wonderful things of Zurich, which would have been impossible if I had chosen public transportation or walking as I normally did. I met a few bikers and they all agreed on this: biking takes you far and faster than on foot, but it isn’t too fast that you will miss things a long the way. Try out biking when you’re in Zurich, but first be warned that this city is not designed for the fainted-heart biker.
9/2009
This entry has no introduction as it was mysteriously deleted from my smartphone while I was almost finishing it on the train from Feldkirch back to Zurich.
Bike issue
Bus no. 2 took only 10 minutes from the youth hostel to Hotel Gasthof Lowen to rent a bike (Kohlgasse 1, 6800 Feldkirch-Nofels, www.hotel-loewen.at. Phone 43 5522 35 83)
I was still undecided between bike and bus. An overeaten-breakfast stomach and discouraging comments from other hostelers almost convinced me to buy a day pass and hop on the Liechtenstein bus to enjoy an easy ride. In the last minute, my curiosity got over my habit and laziness, and I jumped into the no. 2 bus.
I asked the girl at the hotel reception for routes to Vaduz. She made a gesture and rolled her eyes, “Oh, it’s far a way.” Hmm another discouraging person. She gave me three different kinds of map. The auto maps for Liechtenstein, a big map of Feldkirch, and a combination map of two countries to show me different ways to Vaduz either using the main road competing with vehicles or the countryside road avoiding cows. I dreaded this exact moment because figuring out direction from looking at map is utterly useless for me. While the girl pointed the fingers at the map and told me to “come out here, turn left there and follow the road and then another right blah blah,” I was conjuring up a picture of myself getting lost in the middle of nowhere. I can’t read map even while walking; it takes me an hour to locate a street nearby a square, how am I going to ride to Vaduz, enjoy the thing along the way and return in only 6 hours? Hmm!
I studied the map left and right, holding it tightly on my palm for the first ten minutes. But this was no way to enjoy the ride to stop every few meters spotting street names and reading map, so I resolved to just following wherever I “felt” leading to Liechtenstein and employing the technique which every woman should know best and has no problem of doing which is “asking for direction.” After riding the bike for only 7 minutes, I was concerned because I haven’t seen any people on the street and wondered if I should stop and wait until I caught someone instead of just biking and then may have to backtrack later. Then I saw an old guy heading on the opposite direction and shouted “Liechtenstein” while point my finger straight ahead. “Nein!” He said before stopped his bike and said “Come with me!” Huh! And old man in this tiny border city knows how to speak perfect English? Actually he said “Komm mit mir!” Indeed the self-doubt about my direction-deficit was correct. I had been going on the opposite direction. The friendly old man led me for a few hundred meters to a turn and waving to that direction. “First city is Schellenberg.” I think that what he said.
I continued on the empty country road with just me, my bike, my map and sporadic cows happy and concerned for not seeing any more human beings after riding for quite some time. When I say that I have no self-confidence when it comes to direction, I mean every single letter of it. Seeing a group of locals on a grass doing something, I stopped immediately, put on the nicest face and sang the usual song “Where is Liechtenstein?” and “How to get to Vaduz?” Biking, looking at grass and sky and cows, shooting photos with one hand while trying to get it in my head that I’m really biking to Liechtenstein, I saw from afar the sign of Liechtenstein. Yoohoo! Why didn’t I get into the biking business sooner. Only 15 minutes and I was already sold on the idea of biking. It is so fast and so much fun. Walking doesn’t allow you to see many places before your legs scream rest. Especially when there is nothing special to see, you will be bored to dead and start to regret the time, effort and money spent to get there.
The scenery from Austria to Liechtenstein stays the same, and you don’t recognize that you have entered another country, long road, flanked by grass field and grazing cows. I was amazed by the cleanliness and orderliness, but at the same time missed the messiness usually seen in the country side: dog poop, cow shit, brown mud and stuff like that. I stopped for a couple of time more to make quick photo sessions of unsuspecting cows, goats and the open space which they settled in before reaching Ruggell, a bigger city with blocks of houses. But it was also dead on a Sunday morning. I roamed the city a few minutes and encountered a congregation in front of the church. It was either a typical Sunday morning service or a special event of some kinds because kids were dressed in traditional costumes. It was not the group of people that attracted my attention though. The neat layout, beautiful carving and decorated tombstones from the cemetery caught my eyes. I was sitting on my bike holding to the fence surrounding the cemetery to examine a few tombstones when all of a sudden I heard lively music from the church quarter. What a contrast! The dead and the living.
Now I am confused as I was not sure which way to turn. I was about to turn around my bike when I caught a grandma floating in and out the cemetery. I stopped her before she got a chance to run away and asked “Vaduz?” “Ooh, Vaduz?” That was the first and only word which I understood. The amiable lady started shouting and singing in German on the street, waving her arms pointing to the direction behind me. It was obvious from her expression and gesture that the city was far away. But since her arms kept rising up during the course of her speech, for a moment I thought I might have to cross over a mountain or something like that. Sensing the friendliness of the lady, I asked her for a photo which she happily agreed. But when she pressed the button, the flash automatically released, startling the technically inept old woman. Instead returning the camera to me, she pointed at the camera with wonder, speaking some more and laughed hysterically. I bid her goodbye, and only was able to leave after I repeated what she was trying to say for 3 times. I guess she meant goodbye.
Rhine River
I came around the circle and seeing the red biking sign, I turned left. But when seeing a man standing on the front yard with his kid; people in Liechtenstein don’t stay out often, so I have to use my chance. It was a good thing because once again, I managed to go on the wrong direction again. He told me to backtrack to the circle, cross the bridge and follow down the Rhine. Another 10 minutes, and I found myself back in Switzerland. Cool huh, I have biked the entire width of Liechtenstein. From then on, it was an easy breezy ride along one of the longest and most important river in Europe. It originated South of Liechtenstein, flowed north and formed the border between the Liechtenstein and Austria on the east, Switzerland on the west before empty itself in Lake Constance. This wasn’t the first time I ventured out to region along the border. Once I even managed to crossed three borders in less than a couple of hours between Germany, Czech and Poland just for the heck of it and additional stamps on my passport. This harmless doing caused me minor stress a few times later when I had to go to Munich to arrange my work visa. The border control police checked my passport longer than usual to figure out and question me the strange behavior on that day. Here was a stamp when I crossed from Liberec to Zittau, another exit Germany when I walked over to Poland, an entry stamp within 15 minutes back into Germany and another exit stamp a lunch later to be back to Czech Republic. It was before Schengen treaty though when border control spied at your every move. There is rarely anything to see at the border, but for some reason, I am attracted to it. Whenever I’m at the border I see how similar “different” people are in term of physique, languages and ways of life. They are even more similar to one another than their own country men. I was at this tripoint, on the German soil, where Czech, Germany and Poland met. Right in front of me on the left side was Poland and to the right was the Czech Republic. There was one woman walking in Poland along the stream with her dog, a couple walking the same way on the Czech land and behind me were elderly Germans leisurely riding their bikes. If all the flags were removed, I would not have known which country I was standing and at which I was looking. This precise moment had me thinking about how strange it was that 60 years ago these people fought against each other in the most horrendous way.
After crossing the Rhine to enter Switzerland, I hardly see any distinction among the Swiss, Liechtensteiners and Austrians. There are many bikers and few inlineskaters along the bank going on the opposite of me. (I read on a tourism magazine about inlike-skating cross-country routes in various places in Switzerland and thought about returning next year during the summer to try it out.) I don’t know what got into me that day since I kept asking people for Vaduz when every single one confirmed that I needed to follow the river. You know there is only one direction when following the river bank right? If anybody wants to re-enforce the stereotype about women don’t read maps and ask for direction, just use me. By the time I came back to Feldkirch after my mini bike tour, I had asked a total of 16 people.
Vaduz
When seeing a bridge in front of me, I suddenly remembered that I was on the Swiss side and decided to cross that bridge. And what do I know, I was already in Schaan. It took another 10 minutes riding in the country side passing more cows and goats before I got to the city center. Thanks god I didn’t stay in Schaan like the original plan. It’s not because I save thirteen euros per night on accommodation, it is because now look at the city, I’m not sure how am I going to spend two days here, one of these days when everything is closed and the town is dead. I rested at the church before continuing on into the heart of the city. There was nothing to do so I biked on toward the direction of Vaduz. Seeing the castle from afar, I attemped to skip the main road to see the house behind the vineyard and maybe the street to lead up to the castle. It is not open to the public as most castle in Europe because guess why, the royal family is living there and I’m standing right on their vineyard. Taking photos of grapes and green got bored very fast, so I did what any normal people would do in my position. I started picking vines from the bunch, mouthful of handful of small juicy grapes. Oh the swetness and juiciness of the grapes drench my thirst, and the excitment is even more because this stolen fruits, not just from anyone, but from the Prince of Liechtenstein. 
Good and free but you can’t just stand there binge on the vine. Also my paranoid kicked in warning me that I might get fruit poision. Yup that’s right. I was fraid to get poison from wild fruit I might not know. Yup, on the vineyard of Liechtenstein Prince. How neat! And I expect to do an escapde similar to that of Alexander Supertram, the real-life main character of the book “Into the Wild,” who ventured his way across America before eventually making to the wild Alaska. I do enjoy being a woman, especially now in Europe with all these cute, little girly clothing that I can try on, and being a woman, I think you can get away with a lot of things in life. However, only when I read about someone like Alexander Supertram, I suffer tremendously from what Freud terms “penis envy.” Only as a man, one can travel that freely, slept off the street without a slightest worry that darkness has closed in on him nor keeping an eye for other men whose interest is not on his material things. The last two sentences has been added just now as I’m editing the original journal. It has nothing to do with the trip itself than with the book “The World According to Garp” I have just finished. It’s probably the book’s recurring theme of feminism which makes the last editing-minute notice of the difference and thus the result/luxury of men and women. By no mean I want to imply the difference is the “penis” itself though old Freud would have loved to hear that.
Back to the main road and bike on into some place and walk my bike and there it was the capital.
As warned by the German at the hostel, the instant I stepped one foot into the main square, I heard noise and laughter from a group of Chinese tourists. But if it weren’t for the Chinese, Vaduz would have been a dead town. The only few places were opened on Sunday were souvenir shops, the museum, the tourist information office and those pricey tourist restaurants. A lunch menu cost from 27 to 40 euros. Geez, and I already complained paying around 15 euros for lunch in other Western European cities. Like the Swiss, the people here adore their cows, judged by the wide range of cow souvenir displayed on the glass shelves. Oh boy aren’t they creative. There was a geisha cow which covered with sushi and adorned in Japanese motif, choco, farming cows so on. The price for these cows racked up to 150 euros. 
The square is tiny, and it takes an easy fifteen minute walk to see it all. Thanks god I had the bike, otherwise I would not know how to entertain myself for the rest of the day. I got a tourist stamp from the Tourist Information Office for 2 euros. Not sure why other countries don’t copy the business model. There is no overhead, no cost, no expense to set up this business. All they need to have is the ink-soaked stamper, make an attracting advertising sign and just sit there waiting for naive tourists to come in and pull out their passports “I want one of the stamp please.” With the Schengen treaty ratified, I miss my days of collecting stamps and don’t mind to pay extra euros for these silly tourist desire.
Rode back and stayed on the main street Feldkircher. It’s likea highway with no scenary just cars and two bikers heading across from me. Stay there for another hour until got to the border. Now the next step was to figure out where where I was to get to Noeffel to return the bike.
Met an Austrian volunteer who took my photos, walked with me around the square, drove drove me to the train station to buy ticket to Zurich for tomorrow, sneaked me off to a Tibetian temple in Franstaz before dropping me off at my hostel. It ate the same pasta cooked yesterday before fnishing up today journal and went to sleep.
9/2009
Are there poor people in the richest country in the world? “There aren’t really poor people from Norway.” T said. “They are either illegal immigrants or choose to be.” Are they contented with their life? Depend on how we look at it. We would assume that when people are satisfied and contented, they won’t bitch a whole lot. “But we also complain a lot about everything. Once, our minister gave a speech. ‘Look at the statistics; we have the highest living standard in the world. Please stop complaining.’” My American friend Andrew who studied for two years in Sweden and spend one semester in Denmark recently told me over dinner: “When you hear the Swedes complain about their problems, you realize that they have no problem. Problems are reduced to almost nothing.” He scooped another bite of noodles and continued, “But because they are so problem-oriented, they solve every single problem they have.” He chuckled.
These days, I can not go to sleep without reading or hearing how serious the global crisis is. Online news, newspaper and friends’ emails only exacerbate the ‘severity” of the problem. It seems to be the one that occupies our mind though it provides a good excuse for why we can’t and delay doing certain things. Who can blame us when it’s all about the “global crisis?”
“Why don’t you work in Norway? I’m searching for jobs and already submitted my resume there.” Honza said a few days before my trip to Olso. The simplicity of his statement briefly tempted me to thinking northward for a while and already visualizing a cold new life. “You’ll make good money there.” Sure I would. Regardless how much pay I would receive plus a ridiculous amount of incurred tax, the money would be higher than the petty Czech salary. But that isn’t the point. I would like one day to live in Scandinavia. The high living standard is a definite plus, but really unless we have just crawled out of an Indian slum, fresh of the boat refugees floated in the Pacific Ocean seeking asylum, crossed the Rio Grande in the quest of the American dream, or trekked across the Sub-Sahara desert to find our way into Europe which we can then feel right away the contrast in the living standard. But if we hail from developed, Western countries, the standards don’t differ by much. I occasionally joke that I was once a communist, then a capitalist, now on its way to be a socialist. Where else to learn how to be a proper socialist then in Scandinavia?
“The global crisis doesn’t affect them. Ask someone over there to get you a job.” Honza was not going to drop the subject any time soon though he chooses to ignore the fact that employers in Norway requires people to speak local languages that are Norwegian, Swedish or Danish. Like many other Eastern European, he is occupied with the aspect of moving westward.
Anyway, his information got me more curious on how while everybody laments over the loss of jobs, Norwegians can just simply enjoy other than complaining about the weather. The oil discovery in the 70s has made Norway world’s 3rd and 5th gas and oil exporter. Not being a member of the EU, they control their fishing industry. They have a hefty sovereign wealth fund covered by petroleum money. Their finance system is stable. 1/3 of Norway’s labor force is employed in the country’s large public sectors among which are health and education. At the time when I keep reading about hundreds of schools and pharmacies are being closed due to the finance melt-down, it’s bewildering to grasp how Norway isn’t affected. Of course they don’t when health and education are paid for by the government, who is by the way handsomely rich,
They have a strong welfare system, but they also control it tightly. I learned about the term “under-the-table” during the first few months arriving in the US. “Under-the-table” means working for cash while receiving welfare or other benefit from the government. A friend of mine who has relatives in Norway told me that this practice just isn’t easy or probable in Norway. She could not elaborate more other than giving me a small example. Her aunt’s family owns a restaurant in Oslo. Every now and then, the aunt and her husband want to help out with the business by doing little things, but they don’t because by doing so, they will have to inform the government that they work therefore getting their retirement/pension benefit reduced. If they don’t inform, they will be penalized. “But how can the government know such little details?” I asked. “I don’t know, but they do.” She replied. “You can’t cheat as much there as you would here.” (here = US)
I learned from my Norwegian friend that water is for free, and banks incur no petty charges other than giving you money back at end of month. When shopping at a local grocery, I paid extra attention to a range of product labels and found out that almost all were produced in Norway. I’m not an economist and have not lived in Norway so obviously not an expert for source citing, but I believe that Norway has managed to carve out a pretty sustainable standard of living.
Sure, Norway won the grand prize lottery when they discovered the oil in the North Sea, but natural resources alone don’t automatically make a country rich. It takes a combination of doing many things right, and for the time being they are doing a good job.
Saturday
Tourists don’t come to Oslo and then miss out on an eye-wide-open ‘nudist’ Vigeland park, filled with naked statues surrounding a colossal phallus constructed by sculptures of nudes stacking up on top of one another. By now, I should have gotten used to the values of nudity, but this time the artistic orgy still made my heard turn.
If it weren’t for T., I would not have known about the sub-culture Hausmania, a liberal neighborhood, decorated with wall-covered graffiti and philosophical texts. This neighborhood is almost the replica of Copenhagen’s Christiana except that people here are a bit more opened and relaxed, judging by the fact that I could not find any sign forbidding photos taking. We didn’t arrive at Hausmania from the front entrance, so even when T. was trying to remove the chains from the closed door, I thought we were visiting a friend of his, oblivious to the fact that we were about to enter a community. We roamed the place, walking from one quarter to another, running into very few people. Christiana is much bigger and has its autonomy, without having to follow certain laws and rules like the rest of inhabitants of Copenhagen. People live and do business there (mostly selling drugs). There you see police walking about on the rim of the neighborhood while others freely burning, selling and smoking drugs inside.
Next, we moved on to Gronland neighborhood, mainly Brugata street with Vietnamese grocery, ethnic textile shops and ethnic restaurants. T. casually told me when were walking near the neighborhood: “if you walk around this area often, chances are you get robbed.” “Oh so then why are we walking this way?” Regardless, there we were in Gronland.
Ferries from Vippetangen quay depart to a few islands in Oslofjord, southeast of Akershus Festning. Hovedøya, the closest island to mainland Oslo, is a sunbathing area in the summer though it’s impossible to believe given the chilly weather in mid July. From the island, you can spot old cannons and ruins from a 12th-century monastery. Boats to Hovedøya leave from Vippetangen once or twice per hour from late May to mid-August, less in the rest of the year.
Every Dutch has a bike. Every Czech has a mobile phone. And every Norwegian, at least those islanders, has a boat.
Sunday
The free National Gallery provided the next best option to cope with the depressing weather, cloudy and rainy in the mid of July. My only interest was Edward Munch and his famous artpiece “I know what you did last summer.” I mean “Scream”. I probably understand now the somber and suicidal mood in some of Munch’s paintings that I’ve seen. Heaven forbids! He is a Norwegian. There is one small room dedicated to the French impressionism, another for classic Dutch paintings and rest promoting local Norwegian painters.
T wanted to leave the gallery when he spotted an interesting setup from the gallery window with a “exhibition” sign posting outside. It was still raining, so killing time and culture-empowering again was the only logical choice. Most people would have overlooked this modern art exhibition, an extension of the National Museum of Culture and Design, because it wasn’t advertised and visible despite just locating across from the National Gallery. The small room is segmented into irregular space by either wooden planks or cardboard, painted and covered with pop art motif. It’s like getting lost in a maze; you can’t tell where the other people are even though clearly hearing their voices.
If I live in the Scandinavia, I will be culturally depressive with all the museum and indoor culture events I attend just to avoid the reality of the outside nature. From the museum, we hopped on bus 30 to Bidoy to visit one of Oslo’s premier attractions, Norwegian Folk Museum, Norway’s largest open-air museum. The museum includes more than 140 buildings, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries from around the country, rebuilt and organized into region of their origins. The museum is more like an unoccupied farm with unattended shelters, elevated timbered farmhouses. Every day in the summer and on the weekend during winter, you can find the locals dressed in traditional costumes working in the confection shop, pharmacy, folk dancing or baking bread as if to give tourists a feel of how life was in the past. I entered the first house to try coffee brewed by local lady and cinnamon-covered almond chocolate. She chatted with T. and occasionally asked me a few things in perfect English. It is just fantastic and bewildering to come to such place and have people communicate with you in excellent English. Welcome to Scandinavia! From the ‘coffee’ house, I walked about, hopped in and out a few other farmhouses before arriving at the bread baking demonstration. There were two ladies taking turn preparing dough and churning out popping-hot thin slice of bread. For only 20 kroner, I highly recommend you to try the bread. The sweet bread and the home-made butter melt on your tongue while their aroma still linger even a few blocks down the road.
Out from the bread house, I ran into a group of Vietnamese from Moss, right outside of Oslo, escorting a Vietnamese Buddhist monk whom they met while visiting New Deli, India. To be honest, I sought them out after catching their conversation. So I walked near them for a while before finally approaching them and said hi. Not sure why given how much out of whack I feel being around the Vietnamese. We have two different channels of communication. We want different things in life. I can’t or don’t want to explain myself around them and the less I see them, the better. Whatever it is, the Norwegian weather amended it well. We exchanged a few words and took a group photo, I felt deliriously happy. Strange! Bad weather + Closed people = Root?
Parted way with the Buddhists, I arrived at a medieval wooden church or stave church. Churches like these, except for one in Sweden, can only be found in Norway. They are believed to be the first kind of church built in Scandinavia and later replaced during the middle Ages. The church reminded me a lot of Asian design especially with the dragon head and the wood-carving. Up until this point, I have always thought that dragon is the sole symbol of Asian culture. As a matter of fact, according to legend, the first 100 Vietnamese came from 100 eggs of the Sky Fairy mother and the Sea Dragon father. Dragons also dominate the Chinese and Japanese culture. I wondered how the dragon spread to here maybe through contacts with the Vikings.
He who has found himself, can no longer lose anything in this world.
And he who understands the man within himself, understands all men.
-Stefan Zweig
Source from “They key to Self-Knowledge: Structorgram Training System”
My colleague lent me this book given to her in a creativity workshop. The structogram is difficult to understand and use at first, and I spent less than half an hour to do the test, so can’t comment much on the validity of the system. It’s another approach to look at people’s different styles and personalities and use a different method to categories people into 3 colors: blue, green, red.
I never cut my hairs while traveling but I did it in Belgrade maybe so I could be in a closed environment with Serbs. Psychologically, you can not say anything bad about the person who tries to make you pretty. I sat five meters across from Jelena’ former boss who returned to work after recovering from a supposedly terminal illness only to find herself reporting to a former subordinate who was less qualified. Now she looked forward to her early retirement. While walking about the city, Jelena mentioned invitation from a cousin whom she had not seen in a long time and wondered if I would not mind going there with her so she could spend time with both of us. I didn’t want to look overzealous but secretly I wished Jelena would take the cousin up on the offer and take me there with her. To tell the truth I was eager to meet a real Serb, to sit in her house than trying to decipher random Serbs passing me by on the street. Jelena’s cousins kept asking me if they could fetch me juice or quick snacks. Their hospitality and friendliness don’t surprise me because it was the similar in Bosnia—despite the horrible things they inflicted on each other, they are pretty much the same. Jelena relentlessly pushed “Do that song!” After a few “no I can’t and no I won’t,” under the quizzing eyes of strangers, I mustered my strength to produce a wave of low noise out of my throat. “Lane moje oh vidah nah. Vise eh tuje. Kada te pomyslim.” This ice-breaker has shamelessly worked every single time for me whenever I’m in contact with Serbs. Like many Eastern Europeans, Serbs are dead serious about Eurovision, and certainly very proud of their culture. Bring up the talented Zeljko Joksimovic, singer/song-writer/musicians and his 2nd placed Eurovision song “Lane Moje” and you are guaranteed to charm a lot of Serbs. The word “Serbia” familiarized itself to me the very instant Marco turned on this song in a hot tiny dorm room in Gliwice. Though the laptop’s crappy speaker produced mediocre sound, I was immediately taken by the enchanting, melancholic melodies. When I lived in Bosnia, every now and then when I listened to this song, I thought to myself “how can people who create such beautiful music are capable of such things?”
I was a little bit nervous when Jelena told her cousins that I was from Sarajevo. Over the years, I’ve learned to hide details which might connect to the Bosniaks upon the first meeting with Serbs whom I don’t know. One night last year on the way home in Strasnice, I heard Serbo-Croatian/Bosnian language and stopped a group of tourists to inquire about their origins: Croatians, Serbians or Bosnians. They were very happy when greeted them in their own language and sang a bit of their national pride “Molitva.” When you run out of topic to talk to people, maybe just sing. We giggled the whole way until one of them asked me the next sentence: “How did you learn Serbian?” “Oh. I lived in Sarajevo.” I unknowingly replied. Then I could feel the subtle change in their looks and the smiles they passed from one to another. “So the Muslims there are friendly right?” “Yes they are.” “They USED TO be friendly.” One person sarcastically asked and answered her question while her friends laughed. From then on “I lived in Sarajevo” is replaced by “I have Croatian friends.” Occasionally I ate cevapi at a Bosnian restaurant in Zizkov and always wanted to strike a conversation with the people who worked there. The problem is I have yet figure out if they are Serbs or Bosniaks. So for every juicy bite of the grilled cevapi and a slurp of salty yogurt is a stealthy slant at the apathetic woman drawing her cigarette and wonder if I should ask for milk. (The only trick I can tell a Serbian from a Bosniak is how they say ‘milk’. The Serbs say a quick, strong ‘mleko’ while the Bosnians (Croats and Bosniaks) say ‘mlijeko’ with a distinct stretching ‘i’ sound.)
When you generalize the causes of your negative emotion, the negativity tends to be bigger than it seems. Up to then, Serbs are lumped together as one single source of evilness, as cold-blooded murderers and loony nationalists, thus the pictures I had of them were less then pretty. But I have seen them as separate individual, heck some even are my friends; I have realized that they are also normal people and tremendously affected by the mess that they caused. The hosteler cum shepherd Ladimir, lethargically blew smoke from his cigarette while explaining to me how he and Serbs lived only day by day, the philosophy which is too shared by Jelena. “This is small fly.” He shrugged when I asked if the current global crisis affected Serbia. “We had worse,” he rolled his eyes. “It was hard in the 2000s, then before during the war with Kosovo, and before that [the Bosnian war] and before that.” Other than Ladimir, others whom I met were women, thus in way I could easily identify and sympathize with them. They face the same problem like women in my society: a stay-at-home law student who takes care of her small child and ponder her professional outlook; a divorced survivor from a terminal illness wastes away the rest of her professional years waiting for an early escape; a young grad student who finds herself no longer fit in her country. Also there are countless of nameless Serbs who sell on the street, lean idly by the windows because there is nothing else to do or dwell in the garbage ghetto.
You and I and Americans draft list after list of plans to control and handle unexpected and expected events of our lives; after all we control our destiny no? For us, it’s easier without the invisible hands which keep sabotaging our every move, shattering our hope and breaking our dream as it did in the ‘Balkan’. Who knows having no plan ‘life’ finally makes a bit more sense.
April 3, 2009
